Budget: 'I can't afford to leave home on £1,500 a month' and other claims.

[dessertz]

The BBC are focussing on a few brave volunteers to see how they will be impacted by the budget. Today's headline focuses on a 23 year old apprentice who is hoping for a rise in pay so he can leave home:
BBC News - Budget 2024: 'I can't afford to leave home on £1,500 a month' - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyv8y68e25o. Surely £1500 would be enough to afford a flatshare in Newbury? I mean, it might not stretch to a batchelor pad, but a flatshare should be affordable. It's more than most students live on at the same age. He is being paid reasonably for an entry-level job, and his pay will presumably go up when he qualifies.

The other one I didn't understand (in the same article) is the single mum earning £150k who thinks she is being punished for having children because she's earning too much to qualify for child benefit. 🤔

Hopefully the beeb just took their comments out of context. 🤷‍♀️

*married with kids and their own place at 23 and wondering why the youths these days are still living at home like big oversized babies

But generally speaking, it really was the same back at least in terms of being a single person with an average job, no kids and renting - nobody I knew back in the early 2000s on a low or modest income rented a one-bedroom flat. We all shared because we knew that renting alone would leave us with pretty much no disposable income at all. One or two uni friends lived with their parents for a while.

No. You were on significantly more than him. Let’s say your little bit less = £1200 in 2004. That’s £2100 in today’s money. £1500 now is about £850 in 2004 prices.

The housing market is competitive. More young people are staying single for longer than 40 years ago, and more families are breaking up into single-parent households than 40 years ago (so more housing is needed than if they remained together). Also, more young people are going to university than 40 years ago and earning graduate salaries. A 22 year-old single, entry-level apprentice, who worked in unskilled jobs for the first few years after leaving school, will not be well placed to compete for anything other than entry-level shared accommodation until his wages rise after he qualifies. In the meantime, he is fortunate to have the option of living with a parent. Perhaps he will meet a partner he can move in with. But, in the meantime, he shouldn't feel aggrieved that he can't move into his own flat on the back of his current wage.

My colleague is outraged that her DS has just had to move back in with her at 21 as he can't afford rent on his 1 bed London HA flat on his apprentice salary (originally moved in with his girlfriend but they split). He refused to consider a house or flat share.

I and all my friends were in flatshares at the same age - until mid-late twenties.

My parents lived in family home until they married in mid-late twenties.

My grandparents lived in family home until they married in early 20s and then moved in as lodgers, renting a room in a boarding house until their early 30s.

Sharing accommodation because of finances until later twenties is not unusual.

Weekend jobs are not as easy to find as they once were unfortunately, partly because the high street is not as busy and partly because the prevalence of zero hours means there's often an expectation from employers that people will be available at their convenience. I don't think it's about expecting a fancy lifestyle, and I agree that when you're young and starting out in life it's normal to have to rough it and lower your expectations. But I think what you get for your money has gone so downhill in recent years that comparisons with 20/30 years ago are not really relevant. It's like my boomer PIL saying they managed to buy a 4 bed house on one income in their early 20s by scrimping so young people should do that now. Um, yes they of course had to scrimp and had no furniture, but the house didn't cost 10 times their annual income!

Because deposits are much bigger now. House prices in relation to earning have changed. So although we can argue whether interest rates mean the monthly costs are similar. The fact is 20 years ago I had to save 7k for a one bed flat and now it would be 28k for that same flat, but wages have not gone up by that same amount so it takes longer so people either start younger or are older when they buy.

Yes I agree. But it’s not the case that it’s financially impossible for young people to move out and live in a house share or whatever. They just prefer to stay at home and save money. Which is fine is it suits them.

Some apprentiships are great, but I find a some companies are setting up apprenticeships as they can pay a lower rate but they aren't meaningful. there is no guarantee at the end of a job although you do now have your qualificaction and some experience to move on with, they can feel a bit explotative
But if you start looking for entry level jobs they are increasingly an apprentice and you get people with experience doing them as they are the only job about or a way in to a company.

Not all. Some are fantastic schemes that really do lead to proper experience and build skills and a relevant qualification.

How is public transport? Can you get home by bus or tube or tram 24/7? Does the limitations of public transport limit where you can study or work if you're situated in a particular area?

Or would you have to best the expense of a car too?

I'm not a Boomer
By fancy lifestyle I mean tech,coffees,branded clothing, app food deliveries weed vapes etc

I'm surrounded by people at work doing the above and moaning they have no money

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favour of universal benefits such as heavily subsidised childcare. In some European countries she’d pay a few hundred pounds a month as the max contribution to state funded childcare. She’d probably also pay more tax than she does in UK though, even though she’s at the highest rate here.

No, she wouldn't. Higher earners in her bracket already pay some of the highest tax rates in the entire world. It is the lower income earners in the UK, and the wealthy who earn their income from assets, that pay more in the countries in Europe with decent public services. So this woman is funding the childcare service for everyone else while being excluded from using it, paying Scandinavian levels of tax for very poor public services, and being taxed far more than a two parent household with the same household income. That is completely unfair, especially as she is a single parent so is having to do it all in half the time.

If she takes her £150k job to Dubai, her housing costs won’t be any lower, and the £2,800 she’s currently paying in childcare will be her bill for private schooling for the next 15 years plus. Then kids will have to pay foreign student fees at uni. Private health insurance bill will probably be a fortune too.

Much less than the £58k in tax that she'd save though. And often employers will cover school fees, healthcare and accommodation as part of the relocation package. And her salary will likely increase, too.

It doesn't even need to be Dubai. Many are leaving for Canada, Germany, Australia. There are plenty of countries that provide a much higher quality of life for higher earners that charge fair taxes to everyone rather than milking higher earners then excluding them from using the services they fund, so that others who pay minuscule amounts can have everything for free.

Double post

My husband is the only one of his siblings who isn't living with parents. His sisters are both living with in laws, BIL is 35 with a wife and a 2 year old (and been working since 11, rented previously but burnt out)! Same with cousins, only one is renting the rest are all living with family, there are 8 adult kids in the family. Dh is the only one in london the rest are scattered across England or abroad (but same problems exist abroad).

I lived in house shares or grotty bedsits in my 20s, I couldn't have afforded a flat to myself (working full time, just above minimum wage).

That was in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Sometimes difficult, but also made some great friends and we were all in the same situation and had lots of budget-friendly fun.

The idea that someone in their early 20s is deprived if they can't rent a flat of their own is weird.

Plus being deprived as a single parent on £150,000 😂I am a single parent on just under 1/3 of that. School aged child so no childcare costs, but even so 😂

My most recent ancestors were often a kid or two into marriage before they could get their own place. That's if they ever got it at all. Some stayed at the family home with their own spouse and children despite working full-time. It's hard to know if it was choice or necessity when they did.

I’m pretty sure bedsits don’t really exist any more. Nowadays it’s just bedrooms in HMOs that are usually the size of a small to average bedroom (no ‘sit’ part, and often made smaller by the landlord jamming in an en-suite so they can charge more) and a lot of HMOs/flatshares don’t even have a communal living room nowadays because the landlord rents it as another bedroom. A lot of people would prefer a bedsit over that if they were still available and cheap.

Aren't bedsits just studios. My ex manager lived in one in earls court. It had a shower in the room but a communal toilet.

I guess it does depend what part of the country they were in my parents were married with kids before they were even in their twenties and renting a decent sized house you definitely wouldn't see that nowadays! Grandparents had it a lot harder though. I definitely believe things peaked about three decades ago

A bedsit and a room in an hmo are the same.
You " sit" in your bedroom.
Probably some have ensuite but many still share a bathroom .
If you have a bedroom plus shared sitting room / kitchen/ bathroom it's a houseshare

No, studios have their own bathrooms

Most HMO bedrooms don’t have anywhere to sit except a desk and sometimes not even that. Bedsits are more of the midpoint between an HMO bedroom and a studio, so shared bathroom (although often a sink in the room) but larger rooms with an actual place to sit and usually basic cooking facilities. A houseshare is the same as an HMO though (= house of multiple occupation).

Indeed. Not your average pensioner.

And I wonder how many single female seventy year olds seek to supplement their pensions by advertising themselves for 'modelling' work in their bra and stockings. Special talent pole dancing.

The BBC didn't mention that.

To be fair on the BBC, they probably weren't flooded with volunteers. Not many people would put themselves out there for public scrutiny of their finances. You'd have to be either a little naive to the consequences or else an exhibitionist.